


Panic and Confessions

by CameronBlacksReads



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bi!Dean, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Dermatillomania, Fluff, Gen, PTSD, PTSD Dreams, Pan!Cas, Panic Attacks, Pansexual!Castiel, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, nb!Cas, nonbinary!Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:28:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23301676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CameronBlacksReads/pseuds/CameronBlacksReads
Summary: Sam has a nightmare and a resulting panic attack, meaning that he was up in the early hours of the morning. Someone else is up. Confessions and honest conversations ensue.OrThe faces our boys wear when no one but each other is looking
Comments: 5
Kudos: 42





	Panic and Confessions

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Lovelies! This was written for @specialagentrin 's and @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover 's representation week! I am super exited to be participating!
> 
> TW: There is some mild self-harm in this fic. My thought process when writing it is that it wasn't really intentional, it was more of just a tic that the character has. It was written to be like a maladaptive coping mechanism, but It could be triggering for some folks. Stay safe lovelies!

Sam woke feeling like his head was underwater. He looked down and saw unfamiliar sheets, and he simply assumed he must have been in another nameless motel in middle America. He rested his eyes for a moment longer, not wanting to become a part of the real world just yet. Surely, Dean was still asleep so he could afford a few extra minutes of denial and peace.

He finally decided to open his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling above him. And there was Jess, trapped to the ceiling, surrounded by flames. She was screaming for help. Sam tried to get up and help her, to yell back at the very least, but he was parrylized. He could do little more than watch.

Suddenly, the heat intensified and Jess was gone. In her place was his mom, Mary. Mary’s skin was blistering, and her hair was almost all gone. More and more of her flesh disappeared in front of Sam’s eyes, and her screams intensified. All of her skin burned off, and then her muscles and bones started melting, dripping like hot oil onto Sam’s exposed flesh. Again, he tried to scream, but nothing came out.

When Mary had completely melted, the fire went out and the room was suddenly freezing. Sam could feel the cold seeping into his bones and drying Mary’s remains on his skin.

“Hey, Sammy. Long time no see,” said a voice, slickly sweet, from across the room. In the corner, by the door of the room, stood a man. The man was slightly shorter than Sam, with sandy blond hair and stubble.

Sam still could not speak, but he felt like screaming as soon as he realized who it was. Lucifer. Lucifer smiled sickeningly before throwing his hand out to the side. A flash of light came out of his hand and struck a sleeping Dean right in the chest. At the contact, Dean screamed an ear-shattering scream. He screamed for what felt like an eternity, sounding like he was rupturing his own vocal chords, until he collapsed, limp into his bed, smoke rising from his chest.

“Thank Chuck we finally got him out of the way,” Lucifer laughed and walked confidently over to Sam. Sam felt his eyes heat and moisten, and his chest clenched as the fallen angel drew closer, but he could still do nothing except lay there and wait.

Lucifer loomed over Sam, looking down at him. He snapped his fingers and suddenly Sam was naked, his arms chained above his head, with Mary’s remains still stuck to him. He could feel the sharp metal of the cuffs cutting into the skin of his wrists, and the damp floor freezing his soul through his feet. Sam heard dripping water somewhere, and he took a moment to think how chiche that was. Dripping water in a dungeon? How original.

Lucifer walked up to Sam, carrying a knife. Sam pulled on the metal collar around his neck, again feeling it biting into his flesh, but to no avail. “Well, Sam,” Lucifer sneered, “this is going to be fun.”

Sam woke, for real this time, in his bed in the bunker. He was drenched from head to toe in sweat even though he was freezing. He sat up in his bed, tapping at his sternum. He had picked up that habit the first time that he had a panic attack and was trying to tell Dean even though he couldn’t speak. Now, any time his heart started to race and his breathing became unnatural, he would tap at his sternum until it became painful.

Sam hunched over and clutched at his hair, focusing on his breathing. In for seven, hold for four, out for eight. In for seven, hold for four, out for eight. Eventually, he realized that this wasn’t the type of panic attack that he could stop, and that he would just have to wait it out. He hunched over, letting the tears flow freely from his eyes. He let himself hyperventilate, digging his fingers into his skin. Sometimes he wasn’t breathing. He would breathe in, hold it, unable to force himself to exhale, until he was dizzy. Then all the air would come rushing out at once. Then a labored, slow, and painful inhale.

It went on for ten minutes, where Sam was grasping for breath, his vision blacking out and him digging at his skin. Claw marks on his thighs. Crescent moons on his palms. Blood under his nails and on the rough patches on his face. Salt in his mouth. 

When it finally subsided, Sam was exhausted, but even so he did not want to go back to sleep. It was more of a physical exhaustion, the one he felt in his bones, but his brain was running like a hyperactive labrador. So Sam decided to go wash his face off with cold water and then make some coffee. He’d have a lazy day if he had to, but he was not risking more of those dreams.

Sam slowly made his way to the bunker’s main bathrooms. They were set up like a college dorm. Some of the rooms had individual bathrooms, but sometimes Sam liked to go to the main ones; they reminded him of Stanford. So Sam slowly made his way to the stalls, running his hands over the walls of the bunker, letting the rough texture ground him.

He rounded the corner to the bathroom, and pushed open the heavy wooden door. He walked into the bathroom and was confronted with a very interesting sight. Cas was standing over the sink, in front of the mirrors. In front of him, he had various multi-colored things in front of him. And Sam had seen this scene before; he had lived with enough women to know what doing makeup looked like.

Cas was applying eyeshadow with the most delicate touches. He was going back and forth now, making sure that his eyes were symmetrical. When Cas decided that the eye shadow was good enough, he picked up his eyeliner to start applying that. Sam realized he was staring.

“Cas?” Sam asked, startling the angel. Cas dropped his eyeliner and it clattered loudly in the sink. He stared at Sam, a deer in headlights, but said nothing. Both men stared at each other in silence, neither one knowing what to say.

“I think we need to have a conversation,” Cas finally said.

“I’m all ears,” Sam held his hands open expectantly.

Cas sighed. “Would it be okay if we wait for Dean to get up? I’ve been meaning to talk to both of you, and I’m not really sure I want to have this conversation twice.” Cas looked down at his feet.

Sam felt for the guy, he really did. “Sure, Cas. Whatever you want,” Cas let out a breath of relief and turned to the sink to wash his makeup off. Sam felt his chest clench a little at the sight, but he brushed it off. 

So Sam went to the kitchen and started making coffee. He looked at the clock and saw that it read 4:30. He went about his morning routine, getting ready to make eggs and bacon when he thought Fuck it. Dean doesn’t need to sleep any longer. Let's have a chat with Cas. Sam scampered off to Dean’s room, having decided to put all of his energy into being the most annoying little brother he could be. 

Sam slammed open the door to Dean’s room letting it knock into the wall. Dean jumped up and swung his gun at Sam, but Sam didn’t flinch. He just flicked on the light and went over to Dean’s bed and ripped the covers off.

“What the fuck, man?” Dean demanded, putting the gun away and rubbing his eyes, “It's way too goddamn early for you to have this much energy.”

Sam leveled him with a bitch face, “I can’t sleep, Cas doesn’t sleep, and he wants to have a conversation with us. I didn’t want to wait for your lazy ass.”

Dean grumbled and rolled out of bed, “It’s not my fault that I live with a bunch of insomniacs.”

The brothers walked to the kitchen. At this point, the coffee was done brewing, and Sam made a b-line for it, before Dean shoved him out of the way. Dean grabbed the biggest coffee mug they had and filled it to the brim before he let Sam at it. Dean sat at the counter and wallowed in how terrible it was to be awake at such an early hour, and Sam went to find Cas.

Dean only dozed off twice while Sam was gone, and he thought that was pretty good. When Sam and Cas walked in the kitchen, Dean sent the angel a dopey smile as he took the seat across from Dean. Sam sat next to his brother.

Cas fidgeted and looked very uncomfortable with the prospect of telling the boys what had been weighing on him. He clenched and unclenched his hands, looked up at Dean, then down at the table, then up at Sam, then down at the table. Finally, he took a deep breath and sighed.

“When I became human, and when I was not in the bunker, there was a lot that I learned by observing and speaking with the people. The longer I was with them, the more I learned about myself. I began to feel that I did not belong, and not simply because I had been an angel. Part of this feeling of not belonging, I discovered, had to do with my not feeling as though I were a man. As I have explained in the past, angels do not have gender. At least, we do not experience gender in the same way that most humans do.

“One day I met a very interesting person who helped me realize who I was. This person said that they did not feel as though they fit into the ‘default’ categories of gender. They felt that their gender was something else, and was both masculine and feminine. They said the name for this gender was ‘nonbinary.’ I explained how I was feeling to this person in regards to my own gender, and they said that I might be described as nonbinary.

“Soon after that, I met up with the two of you, I met April, and you know how the rest goes. When I was working at the gas n’ sip, I did some of my own research about my gender. I came to the conclusion that I was, in fact, nonbinary. After this realization, it took me some time to come to terms with it myself. The more I read about non cisgender people, the more I realized how hard human life was for them -- for us. I was unsure how the two of you felt about gender, and how you would react to mine. So, I put off this conversation,” Cas pressed his lips together and lifted his eyebrows, indicating that he didn’t know quite where to go from there.

Cas ran his fingers over each other, waiting for one of the brothers to respond. To him, Sam looked very taken aback and confused; Cas couldn’t really nail down his reaction. Dean, on the other hand, just looked tired. Not tired like he does when he’s hopeless and beat down, but tired like he had just woken up, which he had, so Cas assumed that he was unfazed by this development. The coil in Cas’ stomach wound itself tighter around his internal organs as he waited for the boys to react.

Sam looked all over the kitchen, sometimes beginning to ask a question and then shutting his mouth. Sam had that deep furrow in his brow that he got when he was trying to solve a particularly hard puzzle. Dean just took another sip of his coffee.

Dean broke the silence first. “So,” Cas finally made eye contact, “what’re your pronouns?”

Cas blinked stupidly for a few moments before he responded. “Uh, they/them.”

“And is Cas still good or do you want to change that?” Cas’ lips turned up in the corners a little at that.

“No, Dean. ‘Cas’ is still good.”

Dean nodded and went back to his coffee acting completely unbothered by everything. Cas’ nerves settled a little, but Sam still looked confused. His eyes flicked between Cas and Dean for a few moments.

“Uh, thanks for sharing, Cas. I appreciate your honesty.” Cas nodded his head, and Sam just looked at Dean, even more confused. “I’m honestly more taken aback by how you’re reacting to this, Dean.”

Dean choked down his sip of coffee before answering angrily, “What the hell’s that supposed to mean, Sammy?”

“Well,” Sam looked away, “you have always been around hunters and hunters are not known to be overly accepting.”

“Well screw you. I’m accepting. I know all about the gay community. So this gender thing isn’t new to me. I’m cool with it.”

“How the hell do you ‘know all about the gay community’?”

“I may or may not have done some research a while back and I learned a lot.”

“And?” Cas finally spoke up, raising their left eyebrow and smiling a bit. The corners of Dean’s mouth turned up a little as he looked at Cas.

Dean held Cas’ gaze as he said, “Turns out I’m bi.” They were both full-on grinning now.

“Well, I’m pan.”

“So, cool!” Sam said, a little loudly and very uncomfortably. “I’m just a straight man and this was a much more open conversation than I was expecting. Thank you both for your honesty.” Sam slapped his legs and got up to get coffee, deciding that he had been up for too long and that this was too much to process without some help. Cas moved their hand to the center of the table, and Dean placed his over it gently, continuing to sip his coffee in peace

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments and Kudos mean you win my friendship forever! Love you all


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